Moving On Up

I’m not really sure where January has disappeared to, except that for some reason this year it has seemed darker and more miserable than usual. Whether it’s talk of Trump or Brexit or just too many icy winds sweeping in from the continent, I shall be more than glad to welcome February on Wednesday.

The end of January brings us our annual “Moving On Up” event at the Actors Centre which is the point in the year when we first engage with all this years drama graduates. For some six to eight hundred young people, this will be the year they begin to try to turn a dream into a career. Having spent three years in the artistic hermitage of their drama school, they now have to make contact with the real world and the Actors Centre aims to be part of that. “Moving On Up” is the first event at which we offer them a taste of what the Actors Centre can do. 

Tomorrow evening there will be agents doing speed dating, an industry panel answering questions on “Life after Drama School”, an industry fair with offers and goodie bags, and a chance to see that it’s not just you and the members of your year group who will be going out into the world in the summer, but lots of people like you with the same dreams and the same ambitions.

We also get to launch the Alan Bates Award which is the most prestigious graduate award currently around. It’s a tough competition and tomorrow night  we will reveal details on how we have made it more accessible and just a little bit tougher. In return we have added even more to the huge prize chest it grants to the winner and runners-up to start them on the road to a successful career.

It will be brilliant to have the building (in Tower Street in Covent Garden for those of you who don’t know where it is) packed full of potential. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting several drama schools during the last four months and chatted to a whole bunch of great graduates, some of whom I’m hoping will come up and say hello tomorrow evening. I also suspect I will meet some new faces by the end of the night.


What I do know is that we will be dealing with the future; with promise and potential, and sometimes in the darkest days, that is the best way forward.

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